1. Emily Dickinson
POET OF PARADOX

2. Literary Devices
Exact Rhyme: two or more words have identical sounds in their final stressed syllables
One/Begun
Slant rhyme: a close, but not exact rhyming sound, meant to disturb the reader’s ear and draw emphasis
One/Stone
Eye/Majority
Assonance: the repetition of similar vowel sounds in a line of poetry
Hope is a thing with feathers (“i” repeated)
Paradox: a statement that seems to contradict itself but suggests some important truth; a contradiction that can be explained as true.

3. Literary Devices
Consonance: repetition of constants in the middle or ends of words in a line of poetry
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my door
Personification: when an object, animal, or idea is given human characteristics
Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me
Inversion: changing the natural order of words to fit rhyme scheme or meter
Inebriate of Air—am I
Unconventional Punctuation—dashes—set off side thoughts and introduce interruptions of thought
Unconventional Capitalization—for emphasis

4. Themes in Dickinson’s poetry
Dickinson’s poetry explores the relationship between
Love and loss
Faith and Doubt
Death/immortality (does it even exist) and Life
Nature and Humanity
The power of God and The power of the individual imagination

5. “Because I could not stop for death…”
How is Death personified in this poem?
As a carriage driver, who “kindly” stops to pick up passengers
What three scenes does the carriage pass in stanza three?
The school, the fields, and the setting sun
What aspects of life do these details represent?
Stages of life (childhood, middle age, old age)
In Stanza 5, what is the “House that seemed/A Swelling of the Ground”?
It is the speaker’s newly dug grave
Theme?
The paradoxical nature of mortality and immortality—death is inevitable, but in the afterlife (the speaker is recalling the day of her death centuries later) we continue to live on

6. “I heard a fly buzz—when I died”
Who is in the room with the speaker at the time of her death, aside from the fly?
Her loved ones
“The Eyes around—had wrung them dry”
Who is “the King” that the speaker and the others in the room expect to witness at the time of death?
God—speaker and audience expect that God will be there to welcome the speaker’s spirit into the afterlife
What portion of the speaker is she not able to “will away”?
Her spirit/soul
The fly interrupts the speaker at the moment of death, when she expects to see God…what do the last two lines imply?
That the fly, which represents the misery of human life, keeps the speaker from experiencing “rapture”